Quote:
Originally Posted by MitzaLizalor
Quote:
FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
Margaret à Beckett: "If I could perhaps use an example such as the word 'midnight'—minuit—and it used to be feminine and is now masculine. And so I had to explain that, or in my own mind I had to find out why it had changed. [...]
So, once clocks started to be invented, or the town crier would go around crying 'midnight and all's well'—which meant midnight actually lasted for quite a long time until he'd got through the entire town—but timepieces became more and more common. So, gradually, people became more and more aware that midnight could actually mean a particular point in time. And at that point it changed to masculine.
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I read that several times and still did not see the relationship between the gender of the noun "midnight", "a town-crier", and "the sale of clocks".
The lunatic woman seems to have made a "leap of faith", which is only justified in matters of faith, and not in worldly matters.
In Old English, we have in "Ælfric of Eynsham · Catholic Homilies" : 2nd Sermon xxxix. 330
"Hwæt getacnað seo midniht, buton seo deope nytennys" in which it can be clearly seen that "midnight" is feminine.
In German, which had exactly the same experience with the night, clocks and criers as the French, the word is "Mitternacht" and is, and always has been, feminine.
Because God, through Paul, declared "we are all one in Christ", in English, "gender" of nouns was eventually abolished. In lesser languages, i.e. those with unenlightened populations, this has not been the case and the confusion caused intentionally by God at Babel still pervades them.
As an aside, it is easy to see that the apple does not fall far from the tree - Margaret
à Beckett is clearly a descendant of Thomas
à Beckett, a recalcitrant Catholic priest who was liquidated for his stubborn stupidity.